Things are different in a courtroom vs a congressional panel.With all due respect, Paper...you're quoting case law from 1956.
Yes, Lois Lerner was asked to make an opening statement. She was not told what to include in that statement. What she DID that day was make the case that she in no way broke the rules and regulations of the IRS in the investigations of groups with names including things like Tea Party and Liberty. Once she did so she's opened the spigot on that topic and cannot then turn around and refuse to answer questions about a topic that SHE introduced!
in one sentence....
You cannot say "I did nothing wrong" and then refuse to answer the question of what it is that you did.
That is CLASSIC contempt.
Here, let a Fifth Amendment expert explain it:
Explain itGowdys outraged objection was met with applause in the courtroom. But James Duane, a Fifth Amendment expert at Regent University, says Gowdys claim was extremely imaginative but mistaken.Expert: Lerner Didn't Waive Right to Plead Fifth -- Daily Intelligencer
Had this been an actual criminal trial, in an actual courtroom, and had Lerner been an actual defendant, then yes, it would not have been permissible for her to testify in her own defense and then refuse cross-examination on Fifth Amendment grounds. But a congressional hearing is not a criminal trial in two important ways, Duane tells Daily Intelligencer.
First, unlike in a trial, where she could choose to take the stand or not, Lerner had no choice but to appear before the committee. Second, in a trial there would be a justifiable concern about compromising a judge or jury by providing them with selective, partial presentation of the facts. But Congress is merely pursuing information as part of an investigation, not making a definitive ruling on Lerners guilt or innocence.
When somebody is in this situation, says Duane, a Harvard Law graduate whose 2008 lecture on invoking the Fifth Amendment with police has been viewed on YouTube nearly 2.5 million times, when they are involuntarily summoned before grand jury or before legislative body, it is well settled that they have a right to make a selective invocation, as its called, with respect to questions that they think might raise a meaningful risk of incriminating themselves.
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In fact, Duane says, even if Ms. Lerner had given answers to a few questions five, ten, twenty questions before she decided, Thats where I draw the line, Im not answering any more questions, she would be able to do that as well. Such uses of selective invocation happen all the time.
Your "expert" is James Duane a professor at Regent University...and mine is Alan Dershowitz a renowned professor at Harvard Law School. I'll be honest with you...I had never heard of Regent University...I had to Google it...and him. Then I recognized him from his "Don't ever talk to the Police" video. It seems your Mr. Duane not only believes in his clients taking the 5th but advises them to never talk to the Police! To be quite honest with you I find Duane to be a bit extreme on the issue of cooperating with authorities.